> Metatheory > Method and Instrumentation > arghXiv:2603.02419
An Operational Criterion for Dispute Termination: Development and Reliability of an Assessment Schedule
View PDF: An Operational Criterion for Dispute Termination: Development and Reliability of an Assessment ScheduleAbstract: Work on dispute termination has proceeded without an agreed criterion for the event it measures. We report the development of a fourteen-item Termination Assessment Schedule and its calibration against 260 two-party disputes rated by four coders. The behavioural and channel-state items performed acceptably (κ = 0.84 and 0.79). One item, which asks each participant to record which party prevailed, did not: across the 130 dyads in which both participants responded, no pair of responses was mutually compatible, and the item's agreement statistic is negative (κ = −0.06). Three revisions of the wording did not improve it. We treat this as a defect in the item rather than a property of the sample, remove it from scoring, and recommend that termination be defined on observable message behaviour alone.